Monday, October 24, 2005

Pee Wee Reese

Reader Comments and Retorts

Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.

So is he Dave Bancroft with a few hundred more games? That's not bad since Bancroft is about an inch short of Sewell, and Sewell is among the top 30 each year (I think, I didn't check my facts, but you get the idea).

If by a few hundred you mean, like 600 with war credit, then yes, more or less. His hitting was a bit better than Bancroft's, his fielding not quite as good. He also isn't totally trashed by WARP3 the way Bancroft is . . .

So is he Dave Bancroft with a few hundred more games? That's not bad since Bancroft is about an inch short of Sewell, and Sewell is among the top 30 each year (I think, I didn't check my facts, but you get the idea).

With the bat only, this isn't a bad comparison. Both with OPS+'s just under 100. Both tilted a little bit towards OBP relative to SLG (DB ~16 points, PWR ~21 points). The 1200 PA game surges to 3000 PA when you add war credit, though. I'm not sure how the defense compares. Bancroft's SB%'s are quite poor.

Pee Wee is going to be tougher than I thought. I have an infield bias, but also a bat-bias and a "peak" bias. PeeWee's short peak (3-5 yrs) is not that hot, its the extended peak (what some call 'prime') that's more impressive for him.

OK, so I've got him at #17 among all shortstops, just a sliver ahead of Barry Larkin, just a wee bit behind Willie Wells (based on MLEs). I've given him three seasons of war credit (43-45) at 25 win shares a pop. That might be too much per annum, but given how consistently he was around that number at that time, it's a pretty convenient conclusion to come to (maybe, too convenient????). I chose not to adjust them to 162 like I usually would as a way to remain conservative but not too much so.

To fully appreciate how bad Pee Wee was in 1957 - .224 BA, .248 SLG Pct, 46 OPS+ in 378 PA - keep in mind that he played THIRD BASE in 75 of 98 games in the field that year!
Don Zimmer also played 39 G at 3B, 37 at SS - .219 BA, .262 SLG, .262 OBP, 52 OPS+ in 289 PA.
Randy Jackson, all 34 of his G at 3B: .198/.246/.252, 30 OPS+ (!) in 145 PA.

That's probably about 85 pct of the innings at 3B with about a 44 OPS+.

On to the relevant stuff:
Pee Wee's candidacy does seem to need the war credit to make it, unless you really love fielding.
I see OPS+s from age 21 to 30 of:
99-68-98-x-x-x-116-120-101-113

Tempting to fill with something like 98-104-110.
That would be 14 years in a row of average to above average hitting, with good durability and excellent fielding. Indeed looks like a Bancroft hitting twin before war credit is added.

Who else are people comparing him to, head to head?
I see Pee Wee as short of Bid McPhee, even adjusting for war credit, era, and position. And Bid was no easy glider into the Hall.

The closest comp for Reese, as I see it, among the long-career infield crowd is Frankie Frisch (v. similar career value, somewhat better peak, slightly worse competition). Frisch went in very easily. He didn't go in on his first ballot only because he became eligible the same year as Oscar Charleston and Mickey Cochrane. We don't have any players of that stature eligible at the moment, in my view, although a few voters disagree.

Other good comps in terms of career shape and value w/ no competition adjustments are Jack Glasscock (v. similar in most respects by season-adj. stats; Reese wins on competition adj.), Bobby Wallace (even more career value, less peak, less strong competition), and Bid McPhee (v. similar career value, less peak, weaker competition).

Reese is notably better than Billly Herman and Stan Hack among recently elected infielders.

Reese is not an all-time great at his position, but he's comfortably above the in-out line. The best of the backlog is above the historical low-point of the in-out line, but none is so far above it as Pee Wee Reese.

He does not have any serious competition for the #1 spot on my ballot.

Reese is #47 on my '64 prelim and looks like another of the HOF's mistakes. When I first started watching the game, people said Mark Belanger was a great shortstop; I think HOF's enshrinement of Reese, Rizutto, and Maranville are all examples of the same error. Sewell's considerably better, Stephens and Doerr are a lot better, although with shorter careers.

Many of the numbers in KJOK's list need to be significantly adjusted because Reese missed three prime years, particularly prime defensive years, to WWII, and stil had a longer career than any of the players to whom he is being compared. Rizzuto, of course, needs similar consideration of the effect of the war on his career, but I don't think anybody is making the case that Rizzuto was better than Reese.

Sewell and Stephens don't have a post-35 decline phase in their careers, and Bancroft isn't missing three seasons out of his prime. If you give Reese appropriate war credit and compare him to Sewell, age 21 to age 34 (the entirety of Sewell's career), I think you'll see that Reese is the superior player for that stretch of his career that matches Sewell's, plus, he has one more excellent season at age 35, after Sewell was done. Bancroft started later and ended later, so the comparison by age isn't quite so neat, but with three years added to his prime, Reese overgoes Bancroft by a considerable margin also.

I can't do a full set of adjusted rates and totals because I don't have access to all the stats KJOK cites, but here's a pair to chew on from WARP1, since it's convenient:

WARP1, age 21-34, with Reese credited at 90% of his 1941-42, 46-47 performance for the war years:
Reese 107
Sewell 103

Reese IS well behind Bancroft and Sewell by many measures; IF you refuse to adjust for league strength at all. Pee Wee's case, as compared to Sewell, one of our longest backloggers, may rest primarily on our collective estimate of quality of play differences.

Reese barely comes out ahead of Bancroft and Sewell on this defensive measure, even with the longer career

This response avoids the evidence that by measures of value above average, Reese is hurt by his long career. Over a career of the same length as Sewell’s, as I noted above, Reese was, with war credit, 138 FRAA, substantially better than Sewell. He loses ground because of his decline. If Bancroft is also assessed by his maximum career fielding value above average, he rises only to 110.

(and of course Sewell dominates him offensively)

Again, the career rate stats are misleading on this point. Over the first fourteen years of his career, using Howie’s proposed 98, 104, 114 values for Reese’s missed seasons, Reese’s OPS+ is 102 to Sewell’s 108. He is closer by EQA, .276 to Sewell’s 280.

At his maximum career offensive value, with war credit, Reese would have had, after his age 36 season, a 104 career OPS+ and a career EQA of .277, in an estimated 10027 PA. Sewell was a bit better by rate still, at 108 and .280, but in only 8139 PA. And after 16 years of his career, with war credit, Reese is still comfortably ahead of Sewell in fielding runs above average, 125 to 102.

To sum up, Sewell has a small advantage over Reese in offensive production by rate, which is consistent over his career. It is a real, meaningful advantage for Sewell. He has an advantage in career fielding by rate, but that is an illusion created by Reese’s lost time to the war and his decline phase. For most of his career, Reese has a real, meaningful advantage in defensive value over Sewell, an advantage that WARP’s FRAA underestimates, because it doesn’t factor in Sewell’s shift to third base. As Sunnyday2 points out, Sewell was a shortstop for 8 years; Reese was a shortstop for 17 years. Probably he should not have been at short for the last two, but 15 years as an above average defensive shortstop is a lot more impressive than 8 years at short and 5 at third base.

(As far as his defensive quality goes: WARP1, WS, his career length, and his contemporary reputation agree that he was excellent defensively, so I don’t place much weight on the Fielding Runs assessment that shows him as a below-average shortstop for his career.)

So if you’re looking just at quality during their peaks or quality during their primes, there’s not much to choose between them. I think the evidence suggests that Reese’s fielding advantages slightly outweigh Sewell’s offensive advantages. But Reese sustained his play at that level of quality for two seasons longer than Sewell did, and he was notably more durable than Sewell after age 30. So he ends up with 4 seasons worth of prime-quality performance that Sewell simply doesn’t have. WWII wipes away most of this advantage in the raw statistical record, but Reese should get appropriate war credit. And that, as I see it, makes for a huge difference between them, and between Reese and any of the other eligible major-league shortstop candidates.

WS Gold Gloves:
Reese tied with many with 3.
Maranville has 5
Tinker and Rizzuto have 4.
Reese and Rizzuto probably would have won at least one more if not for the War as win shares sees each as the gold glove SS in both 1941 and 1942.

Reese is NOT an inner-circle guy. What he has is he played at a high level longer than everybody else. Some had a slightly higher peak, but no one had his career.
Food for thought.

This is why Reese is still the favorite to take my #1 spot in 1964. He doens't have the peak I ususlaly look for but he has a ton of all-star level seasons (20+ WS), in fact 10 of them as Kelly demonstrated. He also have a decent three and five year peak. This seperates him a great deal form Beckley who has zero three and five year peaks and has lots of seasons around average or slightly above (14-17 WS) as opposed to Reese's all-star seasons.

Reese also played against higher competition which at some point has to become a factor.

I will have Reese fairly high on my ballot. I think he is generally in the Bobby Wallace/George Van Haltren category--very long, consistent careers at a very good level. I am mostly a peak/prime voter, but if a consistent career guy has a high enough seasonal value (somewhere around 25 WS after making all the relevant adjustments, I make an exception.

While I understand that the comparison across era and position muddies the waters, I'd encourage anyone who has Reese high on his ballot to take another look at Van Haltren. If you make the appropriate adjustments to WS or WARP1 for season length and length credit and then line up their seasons, Van Haltren looks more impressive using either metric.

GVH will be number 2 on my ballot (trailing Dobie Moore). Reese will be somewhere between 3 and 10, probably 4th or 5th.

Not really; the HOF is supposed to consider "integrity, sportsmanship, character" and on those counts Reese gained votes as captain of the Dodgers and supporter of Jackie Robinson. Irrelevant to his Merit, of course, but important for Cooperstown; Reese's plaque lists more intangibles than most.

Echoing what Andrew said, yes, for me, there's a cross-positional difference between GVH and Reese.

Reese = 17th among SS (IMO)
GVH = 21st

Another way to look at it. How far from the SS in/out line is Reese and from the CF in/out line is GVH?

In the chart below, the percentages represent how far above or below my theoretical in/out line the players are. This line assumes that the absolute in/out line is around the 25th best player at each position, and that the HOM is erring if it takes any players after that. I average the 3, 5, 10, 15, and career adjWSs of players 23-25 and 26-28 at a position to figure the line.

Reese dominates the career column and is only rivaled by a 3B in the 15-year column. He's a little better than Moore at the 10th year, ditto Doyle. And he's a little better than Sewell, Bancroft, Wallace, and Rizzuto in the peak areas. His peak, relative to his position, is only neglibly different than Ed Williamson.

Vs GVH in particular, he's got him on all counts.

Again, this is just one particular lens to see these guys through and not supposed to be definitive.

And in the interest of full disclosure, what exactly is Player Overall Wins? Is that not the discredited LWTS measure with a new name?

This has been explained in other threads the last 2 weeks, so I've considered it fully disclosed, but Player Overall Wins, which appears in the 2005 ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, is a revision of "Total Player Rating" that appeared in Total Baseball. I believe TPR is still used in Total Baseball.

LWTS has certainly not been 'discredited'. On the contray, LWTS is the most accurate measure of offense/pitching for individuals, and second only to BaseRuns for teams.

The old defensive LWTS formulas in TPR did have some major shortcomings, but POW defensive formulas have been revised and improved. I like the BP defensive measures a little better, but I would probably put the new Fielding Runs ahead of Win Shares defensive measures with all of its problems regarding replacement level, capping of team performance, incorrect positional adjustments thru time, impact of poor or great team defensive performance on bounds of individual's measurements, etc., etc.

Actually I still consult it, whichever flavor, though Bill James demolition of it way back when still carries tremendous weight. I use it as a tie-break when (and only when) WS and WARP disagree. I do find it pretty eccentric on its own, but of course WS is pretty eccentric on its own. Oh, and WARP is pretty eccentric on its own.

If Reese is going to get into the HOM on the first ballot he'll do it without my help. Don't see him making my ballot - and its not real close. He's somewhere around 30th. So why am I pushing him down?

I'm not someone who uses Win Shares as an end all measure. Reese by other measures show him to be a little less outstanding. He got the maximum benefit of timelining if you use WARP3. I give some war credit but not probably as much as others. Just a number of things bug me so I'll put him on the sideline.

I don't use WARP3 and I am as stingy as they come with war credit (50 percent credit based on expectations from '42 and '46 or whatever). And I'm a peak voter. I use WS but not as an "end all." Pee Wee is like Bobby Grich, did everything pretty well, no one thing well enough for the black ink lovers.

For me the war credit is all the difference because it adds enough body to make him a viable career candidate. I tend to be a peak and prime voter, but his career with xc is very good and seperates him from the Joe Sewells and Bancrofts who he would otherwise be a nose ahead of.

Considering the large number of infielders on my ballots, nobody will be surprised to hear that Reese will be near the top of my ballot in 1964. Beyond the raw numbers, the facts in his favor are: (1) the NL was stronger than the AL in the postwar period. (2) He was extremely consistent- better than average every year he played from 1942 to 1954. (3) He missed 3 full seasons due to WWII after he had established himself as a star at age 23/24.

I'm still digesting a lot of things, including NL vs AL.
The key there is anyone who credits Reese on that count must remember to dock Lemon as well. Right?

I've looked further at various comps, and I'll stick with McPhee as the best comparison to Reese - especially since he was a spectacularly good-fielding 2B. I see McPhee as a slightly better hitter, actually, even with Reese getting good war credit.

One concern I have is that the holdovers may be seen as 'leftovers.'
Yes, in the sense that they weren't able to jump right in to 'elect me' like most HOMers do. But they also have run the gauntlet, many for decades, and emerged at the top of this heap.
As opposed to say, Reese or Lemon, who may or may not be any better. And not all of their contemporaries are even on the ballot yet.